Hideous Faces, Beautiful Skulls: Tales of Horror and the Bizarre

by Mark McLaughlin

  Like I said. He had to take everything one step beyond.

  * * * *

  Koko Fantastic: I was Dandy’s first friend in his town without pity, make no mistake! I was actually at the bus station when he arrived. But I wasn’t there to see Dandy. I didn’t even know who he was. No one did.

  No, I was arguing with my boyfriend at the time, whose name I will not even allow to cross my lips, because he was leaving town and he still owed me at least three or four thousand dollars. I was just yelling and yelling at him, telling him I was going to hunt him down like a dog, when out of the corner of my eye I saw this scrawny little white-haired man-child with sunglasses and skin three shades whiter than an onion. He was wearing some kind of tattered black-velvet suit that was falling apart at the seams.

  I looked at that little piece of ghost-meat and said, “Freak, what’s your story?”

  He just pointed behind me and said, “Gee! That guy’s getting away.”

  I turned around and sure enough, the bus was pulling away from the curb. I just sank to the ground and started crying, and damned if that skinny-assed albino shrimp didn’t sit himself down next to me and start crying, too.

  “Oh, now don’t you start,” I said. “You’re so skinny, you’ll leak out all your water and turn to dust. Why are you crying anyway? You don’t know me.”

  “I can’t help it,” he said in that soft ghost-voice of this. “Gee, you’re just so beautiful I can’t stand to see you so sad. What’s your name?”

  I told him my name. My real name, that is. He shook his head. “That’s all wrong for you. Your name should be Koko Fantastic. A beautiful lady should have a beautiful name.”

  Well now, of course I know I’m beautiful. But sadly, most folks don’t appreciate that fact. They think a woman over three-hundred pounds has just gotta be—shall we say, less than pleasing to the eye. I thought little ghosty-boy was really sweet…and very observant…so I told him he could stay at my place for a few weeks. I took that name he gave me, and it turned my life around. His stay turned from weeks into years, but that was no problem, because by then, he was a force to be reckoned with, and I was high and mighty among his Chosen Ones—the Deathquakers.

  * * * *

  Arabella Cream: He came to town with ten bucks and a suitcase full of home-made Goth clothes and a headful of dreams about Andy Warhol. I forget where he was from, but it was some little ditchwater burg in the Midwest. Kansas? Iowa? Nebraska? One of those really flat states.

  I was managing the Saunders Gallery and living in a crummy apartment building about six blocks away—a real rat’s nest filled with crazy artists. But it was close to work and I hate to drive, so it was fine for me at the time. Plus, I had a little act going on at the coffeehouse across the street—performance poetry every Wednesday night—so it was a really convenient location. My neighbor across the hall was this hugely fat Southern gal—a massage therapist who had these totally impossible dreams of being a great actress. Dandy was staying with her. She’d found him at the bus station and so I guess she’d sort of adopted him. Like a stray kitten.

  He started going around to all the ad agencies, trying to do freelance work for them. Andy Warhol did that back at the beginning of his career, you know. And like Warhol, he was as pale as a ghost, with patchy white hair, and so eager, so sensitive…so unearthly. I had a couple agency friends at the time, and we called him Andy Wannabe for a few weeks. Dandy was into the whole Goth thing, but I guess that made sense. If Warhol were alive today, he’d be loving that whole lace-trimmed doom scene.

  I saw Dandy pretty often, because after all, he lived right across the hall. We’d talk every now and then. He couldn’t hold a real conversation: he’d either just mumble a few words or else ramble on about his latest obsession. He showed me his drawings and paintings and photos. He wanted to buy some silk-screening equipment so he could do pictures that way—just like Warhol.

  Eventually I let him do a show at the Saunders Gallery—half out of pity and half because he really did have some talent. Eventually he started hanging out with a group of artist types and he became their leader. Amazing, really, when you consider how socially awkward he was. But he did have a knack for finding people who could help him reach the next stage—whatever that stage might be.

  * * * *

  Xavier Y. Zerba: I met Dandy at the coffee shop across the street from where he used to live. Goth men are usually so chic in their own grim, counter-culture way, but Dandy just looked ghoulish. But still, he had some definite magnetism, and I found myself spending more and more time with him, listening to him go on and on about all kinds of nonsense. He was convinced that he was the reincarnation of Andy Warhol. He said that living and dying as Warhol had given him unbelievable insights, and that this time, he was going to tilt everything at just the right angle so that his work would live forever.

  Back when he was Warhol, he said, he’d touched upon the ultimate truth when he did his remakes of those old Dracula and Frankenstein movies. The truth that lurks beyond life. He just hadn’t lingered long enough on those themes—not long enough to learn anything substantial.

  You know, when you think about it, it really is odd that a pop-culture guru like Warhol would ever have remade a couple of creaky horror movies like that. The things Dandy said gave the whole situation a perfectly logical rationale. I found myself nodding whenever I listened to him.

  His work started selling pretty well at the Saunders Gallery. I hitched him up with a few other opportunities in the city—I know everybody who’s anybody. If I don’t know them, they aren’t worth knowing. I introduced him to politicians, newspaper columnists, club owners—even the S&M cult-freaks who run The Absinthe Martini. I was the one who introduced him to Taffy Belasco. Crazy rich girl with too much time on her hands. She had loads of old-money friends, all perfectly eager to throw cash at somebody if Taffy deigned to give that person the nod. She funded quite a lot of Dandy’s projects—his silk-screening projects, his art films—she even paid the rent at The Funeral Parlor, before Dandy started making money hand over fist.

  * * * *

  Taffy Belasco: Dandy was simply, simply, simply divine. I wasn’t attracted to him in any sort of physical way—but really, that’s just as well. Sex would have ruined our relationship. We had something better than sex. We had rapport.

  He was like my daddy, my brother, sometimes even my mother, all rolled up into one. People used to tell me, “Taffy, he’s just using you for your money. He’s sucking on you like a leech. Wake up and smell the coffee!” But I would just laugh. For a crazy little man who looked like death, he made me feel so alive! So I helped him out. I was the one who helped him set up The Funeral Parlor. He was living with Koko Fantastic, but I thought he needed some additional work-space. Her place was just so small—but then, maybe it just looked small in comparison to her. At The Funeral Parlor, Dandy finally had enough room to really launch some fantastic projects. A lot of his little movies were made there. I paid the bills early on, and in Dandy’s defense, he did eventually pay me back. With interest, which is something leeches never do. Eventually I let him study the Crowley papers—though looking back, I suppose that might have been a mistake.

  * * * *

  Wilma Website: Dandy once told me, “I can’t be around common people. They make me nauseous.” So he picked his own family of uncommon folks—the Deathquakers. He was our pseduo-Daddy, and eventually Taffy became our pseudo-Mommy. And The Funeral Parlor was our spooky tree-house.

  Dandy and Taffy, Taffy and Dandy—the society columns were all abuzz at the time. Who is this pale mystery man squiring everyone’s favorite spoiled-little-rich-girl hither and yon? I first met Dandy through Taffy—I was designing her website, and she introduced us at a party. He took one look at me and said, “Those cheekbones! I’ve just got to put you in one of my movies!” He’d started making art-film
s. At that point, he’d only made two or three. One of those early ones was called Fish—they showed it at that party. It was just forty minutes of Koko Fantastic chopping up dead fish. Every now and then she’d stop to read their guts. I guess some people can read fish-guts. Sounds like pretty boring reading, though. There can’t be much of a plot.

  * * * *

  Koko Fantastic: I was the star of Dandy’s first movie, Fish. I didn’t even have to act—I just read entrails for him, since he’d always been fascinated by the fact that I could do that—that anyone could do that. My mama taught me how to do it, and her mama taught her, and I suppose her mama taught her, on down the line all the way back to Eve.

  That puny rich girl he used to hang out with, that Taffy, she’s related to Aleister Crowley. You know who that is? Weird old black-magic guy. Born 1875, died 1947. A member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. He was Taffy’s great-uncle or something like that. He designed a set of mystic tarot cards once. Whenever Taffy couldn’t make up her mind, she’d break out those cards and do a reading. One of those cards showed a golden woman holding a giant snake—or maybe she was wrestling with it, I couldn’t tell. And there was this big eye shining golden light onto that snake. Yeah, I remember that one. It was the Universe card.

  Taffy used to let Dandy look at Crowley’s old papers—she has a bunch of them tucked away in the library at her Papa’s mansion. I said to Dandy one day, “What do you want with that kind of magic? It’s too evil. Too powerful. Don’t look at that stuff any more.”

  He said, “Ask the fish guts if it’s okay for me to look at Crowley’s work. I’ll do a film of the reading. Gee! It’ll be marvelous! Just marvelous!”

  Well, I’ve always wanted to be an actress, so I said “Sure,” even though I didn’t think people would be too interested in watching me read fish entrails. But I did it, and I’ll tell you this: the fish-guts never lie.

  The guts told me that death would come walking, and that’s just what happened.

  * * * *

  Arabella Cream: Dandy started making those art-films of his, and before long, they were the talk of the town. Everybody wanted to be in a Dandy Voorhees movie, just like everybody wanted to buy a Dandy Voorhees painting or go to a Dandy Voorhees party. The whole city was all wrapped up in Dandy Voorhees.

  After he’d been making those movies for about four or five years, I said to him one day, “Dandy, I’ve been good to you. Why don’t you put me in one of your movies?”

  He fixed his goofy stare on me and said, “Gee! What a great idea! How about this? We’ll remake Macbeth, except we’ll make it modern and interesting. You and Koko and Taffy can be the witches in the big cauldron scene. Xavier can be Macbeth. How about that?”

  I had to bite my tongue to stop from laughing. Hmmm, apparently Shakespeare wasn’t interesting, but Dandy was going to take care of that. Then he said, “You won’t have to memorize any Shakespeare. Actors should never memorize anything—they should always put the lines in their own words. You know what might be fun? I’ll see if we can work in the Chant of the All-Seeing Eye somehow.”

  I told him, “Never heard of it.”

  “No one has. But gee! It’s really exciting!” he said. “It’s something Crowley picked up during his travels. He found the original inscription in the tomb of the Red Pharaoh. He was going to publish a whole book about it, but he only ever got around to writing a couple chapters—Taffy has them up at her house. Crowley realized you had to combine science and religion to attain the ultimate truth of the Universe, and the Chant of the All-Seeing Eye was the way to do it. The chant reconfigures the brain so that it can see beyond good and evil. And the best part is, we’ll be the first people since ancient times to use it, since Crowley never got around to publishing it.”

  Something seemed wrong with what Dandy was saying. “So you’re saying this Crowley guy never used this chant thingy himself?”

  Dandy nodded. “Yep.”

  “Even though he’s the one who discovered it? Even though he was writing a book about it?”

  He nodded again. “Yep.”

  “And that doesn’t bother you?”

  Dandy just shrugged. “Gee, why should it? Maybe he never got around to doing it. A lot of people are like that. They mean to do stuff, but then they just forget.”

  Dandy may have been an artistic genius, but you know, that doesn’t mean he was smart.

  * * * *

  Xavier Y. Zerba: Dandy was going to make a movie called The Legend of Macbeth and the All-Seeing Eye, and he asked me to play the part of Macbeth. But as it turned out, I had to be out of town on the weekend he was starting production. He was disappointed that I wouldn’t change my plans for him, so he said in a really bitchy voice, “Fine, I’ll play Macbeth myself.”

  I was a little pissed off myself, since he was giving me so much attitude, so I said, “While you’re at it, change the name. Your movies aren’t long enough to have big titles like that.”

  “Well, gee! What should I change it to?” he whined.

  “Use something from the show.” I thought over what little I knew about Macbeth, and finally suggested, “Well, there’s a line that says, ‘boil your oil, toil and trouble’…or something like that. Call it Toil and Trouble. Or maybe just Trouble.”

  Dandy’s face lit up like a jack-o-lantern. “Gee! That’s a great title! Thanks, Xavier. I’ll call it Trouble.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “You do that.”

  * * * *

  Taffy Belasco: Well, you know I simply adored Dandy. But Trouble certainly lived up to its name. I wasn’t too happy with Dandy while he was making that picture. How was I to know it would be his last?

  The problem was, Dandy got it into his head to play Macbeth himself, and he was terrible. I mean, he’d recruited some pretty far-out characters to play in some of his films, but he was about ten times worse than any of them. I tried to help. I told him: Dandy, I’m sure Macbeth never used the word “Gee!”—but of course that advice went right over his head, since he wanted all the actors to say the lines however they pleased.

  The sets were just hideous. Most of his movies had funky, kitschy sets—usually rooms in The Funeral Parlor, and sometimes steam-rooms, alleys, fire escapes painted purple, you name it. But for this one, he decided to build a cemetery out of cardboard, like in the movie Plan 9 From Outer Space. He built it in a big, smelly warehouse—the stink was awful, a nauseating combination of burnt plastic and ammonia.

  Plus, Dandy was the only person running the camera, which meant he had to rush in and out of the picture all the time, to change the angle whenever somebody moved too much. Ridiculous! He’d say, “It’ll get fixed in editing.” He kept talking about this chant he was going to do as part of the movie, but he said he’d be doing it last, when we weren’t around. He wouldn’t explain why.

  He really dragged out the witch-and-cauldron scene—that probably takes up half of Trouble. I’ve never seen the whole thing, so I wouldn’t know. The other parts of the movie didn’t take that long to shoot, since the rest was just a super-abbreviated version of Macbeth with a few scenes of a homeless woman doing some sort of spastic go-go dance. He saw some weird old woman dancing outside of the warehouse, so he put her in the movie as Ophelia. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that Ophelia was from Hamlet.

  So finally, when it came time for him to do the big chant scene, he just sent all of us home. Just like that. He told Arabella and me to take the homeless woman with us. He gave us twenty bucks and asked us to buy her dinner somewhere. All the frustration I’d felt making that movie melted away as soon as Dandy asked us to do that. That was so sweet of him. So we bought that old lady a steak dinner at a nice little diner. And while she was eating she said, “That guy, he’s the gate. He’s gonna open the gate.” She said that about five times.

  Finally Arab
ella said, “He’s the gate and he’s gonna open the gate? What does that mean? He’s gonna open himself?”

  The old woman nodded and said, “Exactly.” As soon as she finished eating, she got up, said “See ya!” and walked out of the restaurant. We never saw her again, which is probably just as well.

  * * * *

  Wilma Website: Dandy died filming the chant scene of Trouble. And apparently he’d made some secret arrangements with some people. The camera and sets were gone but the body was still in the warehouse. Two months later, the film premiered at a Goth art gallery called The Absinthe Martini.

  The body had been discovered by some guy who’d been looking for old copper wire to sell. Dandy didn’t have any ID on him—typical Dandy—but he had my business card in his pocket. I’d given it to him the day before, since my phone number had changed. So the copper-wire guy called me on a cell-phone! I told him to call the police, too. Then I drove straight down to the warehouse. It wasn’t that far—only twenty minutes away from my studio. I arrived ten minutes before the police. The copper-wire guy was gone by then.

  The body had turned an awful shade of sky-blue. I identified it as Dandy’s, and answered a few questions about him for the police—and right in the middle of the questioning, the body scrambled to its feet in a jerky, puppet-like way, and Dandy croaked out, “Gee!” in a sad, dry, raspy voice. His eyes were shining with bright golden light. An officer stepped right up to him, and Dandy seized him by the throat and actually shot golden beams out of his eyes, burning two holes into the officer’s face.

  It was the damnedest thing.

  Another officer fired at him, so Dandy shot those golden beams at him, too—and burned two spots as big as quarters into the guy’s throat. He ran over and started chewing on the second cop, who was very good-looking. We’re talking Brad-Pitt-good-looking.